A Risky Fight for Basic Rights

By KYAW ZWA MOE

Aung San Suu Kyi’s refusal to accept food supplies led to a few small victories this week, but at what cost to the country’s future? The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was forced to threaten her health before the junta granted a few small concessions.

How can a Nobel Prize winner be reduced to such pathetic circumstances?

Suu Kyi was allowed to meet her lawyer, Kyi Win, for two hours on Thursday, after which a compromise was announced between her and the authorities. Her lawyer said the regime will lift some restrictions on the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, allowing her to receive letters from her sons, some international magazines, such as Time and Newsweek, loosen the restrictions on the movement of her housekeeper, Khin Khin Win, and her daughter, and also allow renewed monthly visits from her personal physician.

To gain her small concessions, she stopped accepting food deliveries. The pro-democracy leader, who has been detained for 13 of the past 19 years, has refused food supplies since August 15. She told her lawyer when he met with her on September 1, “I am fine, but I am losing my weight.”

Her loss of weight recalls the early 1990s when her weight fell from 106 to 90 pounds. During that ordeal, the detained pro-democracy leader was short of food because of a lack of funds, forcing her to sell furniture for food. Some of her hair fell out, her eyesight deteriorated and her immune system weakened. She was sometimes too feeble to get out of bed.

In The Lady, a biography by Barbara Victor, she was quoted as saying: “Except for my one and only hunger strike at the very beginning of my detention, there was never any other. The rumors [of hunger strikes] began because for a while, there was literally no food in the house and actually no money to buy any food.” Her first detention period was from 1989 to 1995.

For the past seven months, the regime, breaking its earlier agreement, had prohibited regular monthly visits of her physician, which prompted her food delivery boycott and demand for more concessions.

Other concessions Suu Kyi requested include installation of a satellite television service and the use of the Internet, according to sources in the National League for Democracy. Sources said authorities have yet to return her malfunctioning DVD player. Her only communication device is a radio.

Also at the top of her discussion with her lawyer was the issue of the legality of her continued detention, which recently expired after five years. She has been detained under article 10 (b) of the State Protection Law. Under the law, a person who is a “threat to the sovereignty and security of the State and the peace of the people” can be detained for up to five years. Suu Kyi was detained, most recently, on May 30, 2003, following an attack by junta-organized thugs on her motorcade in northern Burma. The regime recently extended her detention for six months to one year.

Even now, food supplies in her home are scare, said one NLD member. Few countries seem to care.

“The United States and the international community remain deeply concerned about her welfare,” US spokesman Sena McCormack said on Tuesday. The UN and its special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, have been reduced to near silence when it comes to vigorously protesting such treatment. Sui Kyi simply refused to meet with Gambari during his recent visit, in protest over a lack of progress in her face-to-face negotiations with the regime.

Suu Kyi’s health is directly related to the country’s political situation and its future. Sadly, she has no apparent successor should her health prevent her from maintaining her leadership role.

She is the one person who can confidently talk to the generals when it comes to issues of national reconciliation. She is the only leader who can unite most opposition and ethnic groups. She is the most trusted popular leader who had demonstrated political integrity, unwavering courage and an iron will in guiding the pro-democracy movement during the past 20 years.

Critics note that 20 years of her leadership haven’t brought any democratic change to the country. That’s true. But those 20 years have tested her principles and courage under circumstances few popular leaders have had to endure.

In fact, Suu Kyi remains the best hope for the Burmese people. Should she be forced to abandon her role on the political scene—because of health or other reasons—it would mark the further decline of an already weakened pro-democracy movement.